ALPINE, California — When you’re raised in a Christian home you naturally have a conflict with Judaism, because the claims of Christianity are based on Jewish ideas mixed with Roman ideas about religion. The conflict is obvious, according to the Church, you have to believe Jesus is literally the Son of God or you’re going to Hell for all eternity. Jews don’t believe God is or ever will be a man; as a matter of fact, it says God is not a man very clearly in the Hebrew Scriptures, so there is the rub.
Christians can’t understand why Jews refuse to look at the clear evidence in their own Torah. But the sad fact is, it’s the Christian who doesn’t see the clear evidence. How can this be? We have the same Bible don’t we? Well not exactly. Judaism has always used Hebrew as a sacred text language. The Hebrew Scriptures have been closely and meticulously transcribed from at least the Dead Sea scrolls period 200 BCE to early in the common era or, I believe, from the time of Moses. With very few exceptions they match our Jewish Hebrew Tanach of today perfectly. So the Islamic claim the text were changed is proven to be a lie and no Christian can claim the Bible was altered to take out references to Jesus. The Christian Bible can not make this claim. The entire New Testament is based on a Greek translation of only the first five books of the Bible, The Torah. The rest of the Christian bible was translated by Christians in the fourth century. Christians make the claim the “Old Testament” is the foundation of their faith, so it is by this criteria that the claims of Christianity are to be tested.
Before I explain why I choose conservative Judaism, let me give you a little of of my religious history. My Jewish ancestry was only a rumor in my immediate family. My grandmother’s maiden name was Stone, rumored to have been changed from Stein in the 19th century. So much for rumors, I was brought up Christian. My parents were very observant members of a church called the “Church of Christ.” My parents were both God-fearing moral people, from Deep East Texas in a town called Marshall, Texas, about 60 miles west of Shreveport Louisiana.
My parents tried very hard to instill their Christian faith in me. I was baptized at age 12 with my father’s encouragement and instruction, as were my older brother and sister. The Church of Christ claims a person must be physically immersed in water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As I grew older I began studying the history of our church. Our brand of Christianity grew out of what was called the restoration movement. The Church of Christ split with the Christian church in the early 20th century. They claim to trace their biblical heritage back to the early Christian church as described in the New Testament. They claim to return to the teachings of the original New Testament church. Apparently this movement was inspired by the teachings of John Glas, Robert Haledane and James Haledane and the Puritan movements of colonial America.
Their form of religious practice follows very simple rules. First, everyone must be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit after the age of consent, around 12 years old. Baptism must be a full immersion under water. Second, everyone must take communion once a week. Communion in the Church of Christ means taking a little piece of Saltine cracker and a shot of grape juice much like we do after service on Shabbat, only communion represents the blood of Jesus and the cracker was the body. It all seems so strange now, but that is really what they believe. If you miss it Sunday morning you can take it Sunday night. If you miss Sunday you run the risk of being lost or not saved.
The church is not headed by a priest or pastor but instead by preachers, elders, deacons and congregants. The reason for this is these titles are mentioned in the New Testament. A popular saying in the congregation I grew up in was “speak where the Bible speaks and be silent were the Bible is silent.” By the Bible they mean the New Testament only. Women are not allowed to participate in service in anyw ay and only men and boys above the age 12 who have been baptized are allowed to participate, because that’s what it says in the New Testament. The services are held every Sunday morning and Sunday evening and Wednesday night. The communion must be taken only on Sundays and if you miss it on Sunday morning you must be sure to take it Sunday night. Wednesday nights are strictly for learning. The New Testament is the only source of authority on biblical interpretation. The Old Testament, as they like to call the Torah or Tanach, was divinely inspired and historically accurate but they do not consider the law of Moses binding, because Jesus freed them from the law, but they somehow consider it to be all true, both old and new. Which if you think about, it makes no logical sense whatsoever.
The apostle Paul’s writings in the New Testament, supersede any laws that come before, such as the teachings of James or Peter or even Jesus himself. Jesus spoke with Paul in a vision, and that somehow gave him complete authority over the entire Bible. So Paul’s word is law in the Church of Christ. And that is true of All major Christian denominations. So if you think about that, Paul’s writings completely nullify the Commandments of the Torah, at least according to Christianity. When I realized this I rejected Paul.
I must’ve been around 20 years old when it occurred to me that Paul’s teachings were in contradiction to Jesus’s teachings, which seemed odd, so I started to question the validity of Paul. This was around 1980. So, in very real terms one can say the entire Christian religion is based on the visions that Paul claims to have had. Well to any Jewish person that would seem ridiculous, but in the Christian world it’s very much a reality. So, around at 20 years old, I started embracing a more New Age philosophy and began studying Zen Buddhism. I still very much considered myself to be a Christian, only with doubts.
I was looking for a church that was similar to the New Testament church and I found one through a friend, a hippie church. This hippie church caused a major rift between my father and myself. This group that I joined would travel around the United States preaching no killing, no sex, and no materialism. We were vegans. I was in the group for around seven months. When I returned home, I was burned out on trying to figure it all out. I went back to college and got a job at the local petrochemical plant. I rejoined the original church of my youth and tried to fit in, but my belief in what they were teaching was weakened. I went to college and got married to a woman who is very Christian and very much a believer in the teachings of Paul. I tried really hard to fit into her world, but I could not live up to her degree of devotion to Jesus. This is what led to divorce. I could no longer pretend to believe in Christianity.
After my divorce I gave up on religion. I begin to associate my beliefs more along the lines of Judaism simply as a default. A couple of years later I met my wife, Kira. Kira’s grandfather was Jewish and we started going to temple with him. I remember looking at the Reform Seder and thinking it makes sense. After attending a few services with her grandfather, I started researching Judaism and why Jews don’t believe in Jesus. I became fascinated with everything Jewish. I began reading Jewish authors. I read Saul Bellow, Mordecai Richler and others like them. I read books on Jewish history. I began attending classes at Beth Israel in Houston. And I would have converted there in the early 2000s, but we relocated to Carlsbad, California, after we lost Kira’s grandfather. Judaism 101 was a great influence on my understanding of Judaism. It’s a website to learn about the basics of Judaism. I really lays out the fundamentals.
From the beginning of my association with Judaism, I have enjoyed Torah. I find the history and the language absorbing and the challenge of learning the true meaning of the Torah captivating. However when we moved from Houston after her grandfather died, we stopped going to temple regularly. I still considered myself a righteous gentile or Noahide, as it’s called in by Orthodox Jews.
You must understand, no one knew what I was thinking and everyone probably thought I was still a Christian, and I really didn’t realize I was not. After a long period of time of not having any association with church or synagogue, my faith waned. I began to listen and watch and read Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and people of their ilk, but soon realized that their arguments were really against Christian viewpoints, and there really is no conflict between science and Judaism.
During Passover of 2016 I made a decision to embrace Judaism. I begin listening to a lot of YouTube rabbis. Rabbi Tovia Singer, Yitzhak Breitowitz, Rabbi Stobach and Others. Kira and I both wanted to be involved with a congregation, but we didn’t know what or were it would be. Kira still considered herself a Christian, but after showing her some glaring mistakes or purposeful misquotes in the New Testament, Kira too decided to embrace Judaism.
Once we both decided we wanted to become involved, our next dilemma was, where do we go? We’d been watching mainly Orthodox rabbis, so I started going to Beth Jacob near San Diego State University, but Kira felt uncomfortable sitting separately from me. I found the closest synagogue to our house, Tifereth Israel. We tried it out and immediately fell in love with the community. Rabbi Joshua Dorsch, Bill and Barbara Sperling, Simon Lonstein, Beth Klareich, Debbie Mishek, Jerry and Sue Hermes, and David Ogul, I could go on and on.
Tifereth Israel is the warmest, most welcoming and nonjudgmental congregation I have ever attended. Everyone is helpful and welcoming. But the greatest thing about Tifereth Israel is that a person who wasn’t born Jewish can have a place to worship Hashem and be part of a loving Jewish community. Kira and I are now Jewish and I play guitar with both musical services, twice a month. We’re both learning Hebrew and becoming more more part of a growing loving Jewish community. Baruch HaShem.
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Mark Thomas is a retired contractor and musician who plays rhythm guitar with Tifereth Israel Synagogue’s Shir Hadash band.
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